This is how I always wanted to see myself, but now that I see it, I’m questioning why I ever wanted to look like that

BuzzFeed asked four women with expressed body insecurities to sit for a for a professional photo shoot and then had the photos touched up by a “Photoshop expert”. When the women were shown the resulting images, they each expressed bewilderment and discomfort in the absence of their respective imperfections. “This doesn’t even look like me” was the reaction of the young woman with curly hair, another woman with shoulder length hair said that “once you take away the imperfections, there’s not much left of who you really are.” It seemed that all of the women preferred their “before” pictures rather than the perfected “after”.

You look at these ads in magazines, you see these women who look absolutely flawless and you say, why don’t I look like this? Instead of looking at other things and trying to aspire to be something else, we should just be comfortable in who we are and just try to be our best selves.”.